Cassette 10: Horopito/Transcript
This is the official transcript for the episode which can also be accessed for free at'' patreon.com/withinthewires'' If you’re listening to this - Are you listening to this? I wish I knew if you were listening to this. For the purposes of this tape… …for the purposes of this, I hope, final tape, I am going to assume you are listening to it. I hope you are listening, because I have some explaining to do, and it is difficult to make explanations if no one is listening when you make them. I also hope you are listening, because if you are listening, that means you are ok. If you are listening, you are fine. If you are listening, you are alone, right now, except for people who occasionally walk their pleasant dogs, far away from you, along the beach. For the purposes of this tape, I am going to assume you are listening. You are alone. You are fine. So. Let me explain first about your sister. Let me explain first about Nell. It is procedure, when The Institute begins to find someone interesting, to interview people they know. People who may be able to provide insights. People who may turn out to be interesting themselves. It is fortunate that a certain Institute worker whose job does not necessarily include interviewing such subjects happened upon details concerning a pair of sisters who had become reacquainted. The Institute wanted to know how much you remembered about your sister, from before you were ten. The Institute wanted to know how much your sister remembered about you, from before you were ten. (It is worth pointing out at this juncture that this is how said Institute employee discovered that the two women she had seen enjoying each other’s company so much were sisters. I will not pretend that this was not good news for her. Her, meaning me. I was selfishly relieved to know it was your sister you were so entranced by, but I was worried for your safety.) I was able to visit Nell ahead of the official interview. I was able to suggest to her that the less it seemed like anyone remembered about anyone else, the less interesting everyone would be, to The Institute. It was clear that they were already far more interested in you than was safe. I did not think you would like them to also be interested in your sister. Since I have seen her more recently than you, I will tell you how she was. She was busy and stressed and her apartment was full of boxes, but she seemed happy. Someone was moving into her apartment. She had been thinking about having this person move in for some time, and she had decided, after a while, that she may as well let them. I did not meet this person, so all I can tell you is that they seem to make your sister happy. She seemed to care a great deal for the person moving into her apartment. I told your sister who you were. I told her who Oleta was. I told her to be shocked. She was shocked. I told her to tell the visitors from The Institute everything she knew about you, as if there was nothing of interest to know. I told her not to tell them about me. I told her to trust my voice. She did not remember you, she said. She did not remember anything. This news did not seem to make your sister happy. Her eyes sank and her hands moved quickly around box tops and plastic bags, active and unproductive. I asked again if she remembered anything about you. It was important to tell me if she did. Nell asked me to leave. Asked, meaning told. It’s possible you are wondering how you got to where you are. If you are where I think you are. If you are where I hope you are. You had been given the first two dosages by they time I got to you, in the extensive studies lab preparation room. I had asked you to do something difficult, something impossible, and you had done it, almost. You managed to get to your feet and pin the security nurse against the cabinet. She screamed. I heard it from the hallway. You managed to stifle her. You managed to get the needle from her hand. You managed to stab the needle deep into her neck. You managed to do this several times, without ever pressing down the plunger. This action did not have the effect of subduing the nurse through pharmaceutical injection. If fact, it had become impossible to subdue the nurse through pharmaceutical injection, as you had managed to break the needle off, inside her skin. You managed to hold onto her struggling body and gnashing teeth long enough for me to arrive. There was some additional cleaning up to do. Things got more complicated than I had planned, things got messier. But you don’t need to worry about that. All that matters is that you are fine. You managed to do far more of what I had asked than was reasonable to expect. I took a lot out of you that day. There was one additional thing I had to take out of you after the security nurse, before the escape, before the path through the forest, before the waterfall and the cave. I hope you do not remember too much of this. I had not thought you would be awake. I had not thought you would be as awake as you were. I had to hurt you, I had to take from you what the institute had given. I had to take the Institute’s tracker out of you or you would never be free. You have to be free. Using a sterilized scalpel, some gauze (Some, meaning Lots of), a suture kit, and alcohol, I reopened your Y-shaped scar. I took the black box with its stubby antenna and red light from the cave that floats in the space to the left of your stomach. I am not a doctor. I did the best I could with the stitches in such a short amount of time. I had so little time. You shouted when I cut the skin, when I pulled out the device, when I sewed you back up. But you did not respond when I tried talking to you. You seemed asleep, even as you screamed. In this cottage - If you are listening to this, you must be in the cottage, because that is where I had this tape delivered - you probably have noticed that no one has shown up at your door. No cameras monitor you. No telephones or security personnel. No one has accosted you in the street. No one has walked behind you for a suspiciously long time at a suspiciously consistent distance. There are no people standing in your periphery with sunglasses, cigarettes, or unpleasant dogs. No one has followed you. If you had a tracking device installed in your stomach, someone would have followed you. If I had left it there you would not have been safe. I had to do it. I’m so sorry. I had to. I wish I hadn’t, I can’t stop thinking about it. Your skin was already red and inflamed, you had already been so hurt, I did not want to hurt you again. I know I have risked further infection. I just - There is no point in talking about that particular point of that particular evening. I am sorry I hurt you. I am glad I ensured you were not followed. I trust you are getting rest and consuming the antibiotics I had left for you on the counter next to the bath. I am sorry that the last time I saw you, you were weak and in pain, lying on the floor of a cave. It was not an ideal goodbye. It is not the way I wanted to take you away from the Institute. I had pictured us travelling together, slowly, gently, seeing beautiful places. Maybe we would have taken trains towards the south. Taken a plane across oceans. Walked paths in South America. Found a yacht, with just enough room for two, and sailed around the Pacific. Sailed until we got to a certain beach. Near a certain town. With a certain cottage. Instead I waited in the cave with you to make sure you were ok when you left. When someone came to take you. I couldn’t come with you. I had - have - cleaning up to do. I couldn’t come with you, but I had made arrangements (Arrangements, meaning Pleading and Explaining and Convincing). I had made arrangements with someone I could trust - I had asked someone to trust my voice - I had asked to have you driven to the city. To have you taken to the harbour. To have you put on a boat that would take you where I wanted to take you myself. Your transport was not glamourous. Glamorous transportation would only call attention to you. So, instead you were put on a makeshift bed in the back of a small truck, surrounded by innocuous sacks of potatoes. You were given berth on a cargo ship. You sailed away from me and I could not watch you go. You were barely conscious by the time Nell got to the cave to collect you. I don’t know if you realised she was there. I could not wait, once she arrived. It was important I was not gone from The Institute for longer than I needed to be. I told Nell she would be safest if she forgot all of this. Said nothing of this. Disavowed remembering you at all. I left quickly. But before I left, Nell said to me “I remember my bed.” I paused. I did not want to pause long, as there was much to do to save myself. Nell said: “Oleta never liked to sleep alone. She always snuck into my room at night. She always slept in my bed. “I just now remembered that.” END SIDE A # # # I’m not with you yet. There are some things I still have to take care of. I have to do this so much more quickly than I want to. I couldn’t plan as much in advance as I had intended. I had to get you out of the Extensive Studies Lab before - before carpentry began. You can heal from most everything they do to you. You cannot heal from carpentry. Carpentry is forever. It is important that The Institute doesn’t realise that the woman who sat watching monitors and recording tapes and the patient who cried out, one night, for Hester, are connected at all. The videos from your last night at The Institute I replaced immediately, using old footage of an empty preparation room. The security nurse will not remember what happened - I have made sure of that. Perhaps, long after the drugs wear off, she will find her way back home. Perhaps not. I hope to be gone by then. But there are files. There are interconnected tapes. There are crumbs of lives lived in this building and it is important that I clean them all up. To avoid immediate pursuit by the Institute’s security team, I will report my findings to them. That there is no record of either you or the security nurse reporting to the preparation room. That both you and the security nurse are missing. There is no footage of the security nurse leaving her office to go to the lab. That no footage exists of either of you leaving the building. That the two of you must have found a secretive path out. I will walk them through a convincing route that involves, for example, staying close to walls, out of sight of cameras, out the front door at certain times of night, and walking next to trucks and along tree lines, where cameras cannot find. I will show them edited and looped footage of that security nurse crossing over and over past your door, demonstrating an obsessive care over your well being. After I have cleaned up everything that has been left in this place, by you, or by me, I will tell the Institute that I am resigning my position, that I would like to return to my old career - that I would like to return to galleries and studios, to watercolours and oils. It does not pay as well, to be sure, but lingering over strokes of color and texture, patterns and lines, is what I want more than to study living people through flickering screens and numerical data. It will be innocuous, simple. I will leave my work, and I will go to my apartment for a few days. I will be followed and watched. I will talk to friends aloud in public spaces, and I will tell them that I have a need for rest and sun before starting a new job. I will go to a hotel by a lake. I will be followed and watched. I will return home. I will send out resumes - they will be poor, as I do not want a job here. I will be followed and watched less. I will continue my life and I will be followed less, watched less. I will live in constant fear that they will find some unedited footage that will show what I have done. Until one day I will not see any people with sunglasses and cigarettes standing with unpleasant dogs. And then I will leave my apartment and I will disappear. I don’t know how long all this will take. It may take a long time for me to get to our cottage on the sea, it may take months. I don’t know. I hope no one is already suspicious. I have taken pains to be unobtrusive. I have slipped into offices and along corridors, I have made no friends here (only acquaintances), I have expressed no opinions, I have faded into the background. Once I have cleaned all the footage of all the rooms and corridors I have been in, once I have replaced certain key tapes with generic footage, old footage that could come from any day, any normal day when nothing really happened. And once I have destroyed every cassette I have created and once I have made sure any details about me The Institute has on file are… …inaccurate, then I will be able to leave. I will not use standard means to travel. I will hitchhike, I will meander, I will not travel with traceable records, I will take every backroad, and by the time I get to a certain cottage by the sea I will be finally be Hester again. I cannot stop thinking of you, in the cottage by the sea. Have you noticed the painting above the fireplace? There is a sofa opposite it. I have sat on that sofa for many hours seeing that painting. It is called Mountain Horopito #4. The artist was Roimata Mangakāhia. She painted mostly abstract human figures with long boneless limbs, their faces and toes entwined and multiplying, like an intricate root system. But late in life Mangakāhia painted shrubs, just shrubs on a mountain near her home, a cottage by the sea. It was not this cottage, but it was nearby. Do you find the painting beautiful? I will take you to see a real horopito shrub one day, if you would like. This painting is one of my favourites. I used to think all of Mangakāhia’s work should be on the wall of a museum in a large city, so as many people as possible could see it, and enjoy it, and appreciate the artist’s brilliance. But now… Now I am happy that this one is just there for you. So you can start each day by looking at something beautiful, something that was made by someone, out of nothing, out of canvas and puddles of colour. Something that will let you think about how much beauty there is, inside the minds of people. I like to think of you gazing at this painting while sipping your morning coffee, letting it seep into you. I like to think of you starting your mornings slowly. Gently. Wandering around, preparing your breakfast. Letting the day grow around you. Then, maybe you go for walks along the shore. Maybe you sit outside for a while with a book. Did you ever finish A Wizard of Earthsea? Maybe you stroll into town to buy bread - the bakery by the square is excellent, have you tried it yet? I imagine you trying it. I imagine you breathing the seafoam air. I imagine you breathing without reminders to do so. I like to envision how you spend your days, because it stops me from picturing what I am afraid of - that you are not there at all. That you have taken your freedom and used it to go elsewhere, somewhere other than this cottage by a sea, so far away from where you lived, from where you have ever been. That you have decided you cannot trust me and do not want to know me, properly, again, and decided to find your own way, where I cannot follow. I envision myself understanding why you would do this. If you are listening, then, of course you are there, for now. I shall send this tape, along with a cassette player, to the cottage on the beach, where I hope it will find you. It will be delivered, probably, by the postman on his bicycle, at around 10 in the morning. It will be delivered without a legitimate return address, from an anonymous source. It will be big enough and unusual enough that he will comment on it. You won’t have had any other mail, after all. He will wish you a nice day, and leave you alone. You will open the package in the kitchen (did you find the scissors in the third drawer down?) and you will recognise the cassette as the same as the ones you heard here. You will be curious. There is much you don’t know. You will take this tape to the low chair on the back porch, overlooking the sand and sea. And you will listen to my voice. The last time you will hear my voice recorded. The next time you hear my voice, it will be in person. I hope. If you are there. Maybe you won’t be. Maybe you will have left. If you have left then you are still free. And if you are free that will be enough. But maybe you will be where I am picturing you. In a cottage by the sea. I hope you are there. I want you to be there. I need you to be there. You will be there. You will be. But... ...if you are gone when I arrive, it is enough to know that you are free. What a funny word: Free. I hope. I hope I get to see you again. Category:Transcripts